Breaking the Silence (organization)
Breaking the Silence is an Israeli non-governmental organization established in 2004 by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces. It is intended to give serving and discharged Israeli personnel and reservists a means to confidentially recount their experiences in the Israeli-occupied territories. Collections of such accounts have been published in order to educate the Israeli public about conditions in these areas.
The organization's stated mission is to "break the silence" surrounding these military activities. Founded to collect testimony from 2000 to 2004 from troops who served in the occupied territories, the NGO has collected and published accounts related to Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip and other areas since then.
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior political figures have repeatedly criticised the organization, and attempted to dissuade other countries from funding it. At the same time, some senior figures in the Israeli defense and security establishment have defended the NGO. For instance, General Amiram Levin said in 2015 that "Breaking the Silence strengthens the IDF and its morality."
History
Among the Israeli Defense Forces units serving during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, there was one in particular, battalion 50 of the Nahal, that in that period consisted of many youths from moshavim and kibbutzim, who had often known each other before their service. Erella Grassiani believed their background was one in which there was more open talk about a two-state solution and perhaps more sympathy for the civilians they encountered.Members of battalion 50 were assigned to serve in the city of Hebron, which is important to all the Abrahamic religions. This second-largest city in the Occupied Territories had 160,000 Palestinians; it also had 500 Jewish settlers who occupied houses in the city center. Some 500 soldiers were stationed there to protect the settlers, resulting in frequent and close encounters with Palestinian civilians.
Some of the soldiers were disturbed by what took place. Following their service, three reservists collected photographs and made a videotape of testimonies by other IDF soldiers who had also served in Hebron, to show what occurred in encounters between Palestinian civilians and the military. In June 2004 in Tel Aviv, Yehuda Shaul, and two other former soldiers, Jonathan Boimfeld and Micha Kurtz, organized an exhibit called Breaking the Silence, which featured photos and videotapes that "documented their compulsory service in Hebron." They wanted to educate the general Israeli population about what went on in military efforts to control Arab populations of the Occupied Territories. The exhibition was attended by thousands of people and received some international coverage. Afterward, the organizers were questioned by IDF personnel seeking to substantiate apparent abuses by those veterans.
That same year, Shaul, Avichai Sharon, and Noam Chayut, founded Breaking the Silence, a non-governmental organization. They set up a website, www.shovrimshtika.org, and advertised that they would confidentially collect and record testimonies by veterans of their military experiences in the Occupied Territories since the start of the Second Intifada. They also volunteered to speak to youth groups, schools and community groups about their experiences. They traveled all across Israel to collect such accounts. The NGO attracted hundred of members in its first year.
For more than a decade, Breaking the Silence has published booklets and books that are collections of soldiers' accounts in order to educate the public about the reality of military operations by Israeli soldiers in the territories. These publications are listed below and in the External Links section, with information for downloading the texts.
BtS also posts written and videotaped reports on its official website. In addition, members have conducted speaking tours throughout Israel, Western Europe, and the United States.
Officials
Shaul, who had completed two tours of duty in Hebron, served as the first executive director of BtS. In 2007 he became its foreign relations director, as the organization began to seek outside support for funding for its programs, in addition to providing direct aid to refusenik members and their families. It began to gain support from some church groups in various countries, primarily in Europe, as well as some direct support from some European governments and international groups.In 2007 Mikhael Manekin became executive director of BtS. In 2012 Dana Golan was serving in this post. According to the organization's website in 2017, the current executive director is Avner Gvaryahu.
Funding sources and issues
Breaking the Silence is funded through grants, including some from sources in Europe. In 2007, the NGO received a total of NIS 500,000. In 2008, it raised NIS 1.5 million, in 2009, around €275,000, and in 2014, NIS 3.8 million. According to the NGO Monitor website, between 2010 and 2014, foreign sources accounted for 65% of the group's funding. Breaking the Silence published its financial statements as of December 31, 2014, listing major donors who contributed more than 20,000 NIS that year. This included funding from the New Israel Fund, amounting to NIS 229,949, and funding from foreign governments.Breaking the Silence representatives who traveled to the United States to speak on college campuses and to Jewish communities were sponsored in 2007 by Jewish and Palestinian organizations.
In 2008, BtS told The Jerusalem Post that the British Embassy in Tel Aviv gave the organization NIS 226,589 ; the Dutch Embassy donated €19,999; and the European Union gave €43,514. In addition, during 2008, Spain is reported to have provided tens of thousands of euros to fund patrols run by Breaking the Silence in the city of Hebron. The Women Soldiers' Testimonies report, published in January 2010, was funded by The Moriah Foundation, the New Israel Fund, ICCO, SIVMO, Oxfam GB, the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, the EU, and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation.
In 2010, according to Moshe Dann, writing in The Jerusalem Post, Breaking the Silence's budget was NIS 3.1 million. It received a total of 1.5 million from the EU, and the UK and Spanish governments. The rest came from Oxfam, the New Israel Fund; Dutch, German, Danish and Irish church organizations; and NDC, the Palestinian NGO that promotes Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns. In 2014, the NGO received the majority of its funding from foreign governments.
Relation to other activism
Other Israelis and Palestinians have also been concerned about the conduct of Israeli soldiers in the Occupied Territories. A case reached the Israeli Supreme Court that challenged the IDF policy known as the "neighbor procedure". This is the term for Israeli soldiers' using Palestinian civilians as human shields in order to protect soldiers during their operations from suspected booby traps or attacks by Palestinian militants. The Israeli Supreme Court in 2005 prohibited the "neighbor policy", saying that Israeli troops could not use Palestinians as shields.In May 2011, 24 former IDF soldiers provided testimony describing continued military use of the "neighbor procedure". As reported by The Guardian, veterans through BtS also described daily harassment of Palestinians at military checkpoints and the deliberate ransacking of their homes.
Activities
Anonymous soldier testimonies
Since 2004, Breaking the Silence has run a testimonies collection project called "Soldiers Speak Out". By 2009 they had collected several hundred testimonies, many of them anonymous, from "those who have, during their service in the IDF, the Border Guard, and the Security Forces, played a role in the Occupied Territories."Breaking the Silence says that confidentiality is necessary because the IDF allegedly prohibits service personnel from speaking publicly about their activities. As is typical of many large organizations, only official military spokesmen are allowed to speak to the media. Breaking the Silence officials say that they can provide personal details of soldiers to official and independent investigations, on the condition that the identities of soldiers are not made public.
In April 2008, BtS released a report about the state of affairs in the West Bank city of Hebron. It included 39 eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers who had served there.
The report generated widespread controversy and public debates in Israel about the implications of its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. Publication of additional collections since then has generated additional controversy and renewed discussions after each event.
Hebron tours
Since 2005, BtS has been conducting tours to Hebron for members of the Israeli public and foreign visitors. BtS wants the Israeli public to witness the realities in the Occupied Territories. In August 2008, the Israeli police cancelled the tours temporarily because a group of United Kingdom diplomats were harassed by Jewish settlers. The settlers taunted tour members and threw stones and eggs at them.That year, Commander Avshalom Peled, the head of the Israel Police's Hebron district, criticized both Breaking the Silence and Bnei Avraham, another group in Hebron. He said, "The left-wing organizations have become an even greater threat than the anarchists." In June 2008, Peled said that he believed that BtS provoked settlers in the hope of producing a violent response for public reaction.
Bnei Avraham says that it is "committed to 'disturbing the occupation, disrupting the segregation and apartheid regime'." Police said that BtS and Bnei Avraham had held an illegal rally during a Hebron tour on 25 April 2008.
MK Zehava Gal-On responded to Ynet reporting of police statements in Hebron, saying, "It would seem as though the police are working for the Kahanist and fascist groups in Hebron. I call on the internal security minister to conduct an investigation into the conduct of police forces in Hebron."
In his 2014 book Jewish State, Pariah Nation, American journalist Jerold Auerbach, who has been described as a proponent of right-wing Zionism, reported that some former soldiers expressed antipathy to the Jewish settlers in the West Bank.